Red State (2011)
Red State
★★★☆☆
Directed by: Kevin Smith
Written by: Kevin Smith
I decided to watch Red State after finishing Writer/Director Kevin Smith’s book, “Tough S—t.” It’s a bit difficult to know whether it would have been a different experience to see Red State without the contextual framework provided by the discussion in the book. And, to be honest, some of that is even dependent on the facts of my familiarity with Smith’s other work, because I was a big fan of Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy and to an extent Dogma, but starting with Jay and Silent Bob Strike back, I haven’t been as adamant about following along with Smith. I did get around to seeing Clerks II and Zack And Miri Make A Porno, but unlike the previous films which I practically saw on opening weekends, they were grudging, not-in-the-new-releases rentals. I never did see Jersey Girl or Cop Out. And I probably wouldn’t have bothered with Red State either, except Smith, in his book, describes it as his homage to Quentin Tarantino. And, well, I sort of masochistically wanted to see what a Smith-does-Tarantino flick would look like.
But this is why I think if I didn’t know that’s what Smith was doing, I wouldn’t have had the same reaction. Because Red State is a very different kind of movie from anything else he’s done. Oh, sure, Dogma had its scenes of intense violence and religious themes, but it was still essentially Mallrats with a much grander concept. Gone are a lot of the aimless asides and the shock-schlocky, replaced instead by a script that is curiously focused while at the same time never quite being pinpoint. It’s never easy to tell who the protagonist is in the story, though the villain is sort of obvious, except that it is really circumstance that propels most of the deplorable actions, not all of which are done at the hands of the “bad guy.”
Let me give you an example of one of the many unusual decisions Smith makes in the construction of this film: Following the initial set up and the introduction of a few key characters, Smith films almost the entirety of a sermon, delivered by Abin Cooper (played with a pitched charisma by Michael Parks) that starts off as a genial, inviting, small-congregation fireside chat but slowly—almost laboriously—descends into a seething roil of hate and hellfire, culminating in an uncomfortably unflinching ritual murder. Smith describes in his book a desire to never take the obvious path with his story and this comes through as the winding narrative feints this way and that, suggesting at various stages a campy sex romp, a torture porn thriller, a straight up horror slasher, a cop siege procedural, a dark morality tale, a supernatural allegory and a political potboiler. It’s sort of all and none of those things.
What it definitely adds up to is a Tarantino-esque indie shootout talker. On that level, knowing that’s what Smith wanted, it succeeds. From a pure storytelling standpoint, Red State is gripping and unpredictable, which is what I liked most about it. On the other hand, Red State also struggles in its effort to be unexpected, to have a sense of purpose. It seems like it might be fairly obvious that Smith is demonizing hate-in-God’s-name publicity morons like the Westboro Baptist Church (or any other unpleasant organization using warped ideals to judge or detest others) but aside from a base despicable-ness to their convictions, the Five Points Church (led by Cooper) respond to the circumstances the film throws them into with a peculiarly understandable motive. The “good guys” of the ATF, led by Joseph Keenan (played with superb, nuanced inner conflict by John Goodman), are the ones who, though ostensibly in the right, often make the most unconscionable decisions.
Most of the neutral parties caught in the middle are never really given a place in the theme, which means they become expendable to the script. Smith tries to make a certain amount of sense of it in retrospect with an overly expository interview scene. To an extent I like this choice because it cements the fact that tense, adrenaline-fueled scenarios like this only ever have context after the fact, but the highlight passage from the script in this scene suggests that Smith’s moral is the same as he leveled in Dogma: be wary of faith without reason.
And then the part that ultimately dropped the film an entire star for me comes in the epilogue. Note, this is (I guess) spoiler territory, but understand that the linear construct of Red State isn’t really that important; in any case, you can skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to know. Anyway, the final scene in the film is Cooper in prison, wearing an orange jumpsuit and singing a hymn in his cell. It’s a long, intentionally ponderous shot and then finally, just before the credits roll, someone off camera (presumably a fellow inmate) hollers, “Shut the f—k up!” My problem with this is that it seems to be a semi-symbolic part of Smith’s message, hinting strongly that what he really has to say to misguided faith-based lunatics is “just go away.” I have a big problem with a film that is as thoughtful as Red State going for either a laugh or a frustrated outburst or both as its closing statement, especially coming from a guy who has made a career out of being overly honest, whether that’s with his character mouthpieces in his films or his podcasts or his spoken word public speaking or his book. It’s so simplistic and glib and counter-productive to summarize an issue like reconciling the troublesome nature of deplorable ideas that are so easily translated into antisocial actions with a simple gag order, even played for (non) laughs. The film, sadly, would have been at least 20% better without this final, 30-60 second scene.
All told, Red State is a promising new direction for Smith. Unfortunately, if you believe what he says in his Tough S—t book, it will be his penultimate film. Smith has been uneven as a filmmaker, even from the start, often accidentally achieving greatness. Here, he accidentally misses greatness and showcases a potential for something grittier and different from what others might say with similar material. And that’s exactly what you want from a filmmaker, I think.